Nantes – Lyon Preview

To be honest Nantes would have had more chances to win if Bastia wouldn’t have got a red card (finished 0-0).

Nantes managed to apply constant pressure but after the red card and the missed penalty everything changed. Bastia changed system and concentrated purely on defending. There were simply no spaces anymore for Nantes to exploit. It seems there’s some true in the saying “it’s harder to play against 10 than against 11″…

When the season started Nantes’ biggest weakness was the poor offensive phase. Now things have improved, the game has a good flow and we can even see one touch triangles between fullbacks, wingers and the striker.

Midfielder Veretout was left on the bench against Bastia in order to avoid tiredness. Most likely he will be in the lineup this round.

Lyon destroyed Lorient 4-0 in their best performance this season so far. The good display is not a direct result of important players returning one by one from injury, but instead the primary reasons for improvement are the playing relations developed between substitute players and their confidence that slowly increased.

Upfront Lyon are on fire with Lacazette the undisputed leader, Fekir a key player now and young N’Jie scoring his first goal ever for Lyon (senior squad).

At the back they are almost complete, only Bisevac is still out injured. Defensive midfielder Gonalons sometimes adventures upfront in order to take part in the creation phase. When that happens the defense is left uncovered and at the moment neither Umtiti nor Kone (central defenders) are playing at full potential.

This should be an interesting encounter with both sides in good form and confidence. Seeing that both Nantes and Lyon are set on continuing the good run this can easily turn into a high scoring affair in case of an early goal, so keep an eye on this one for live betting.